Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

Howdy folks. Thanks for all the great comments about the graduated filter presets earlier this week. Glad you enjoyed ‘em. Here’s a few links of interest:

• Fotomagico 2.6 is out (the slideshow software that I swear by) and it now supports Adobe Lightroom 2 libraries.

• onOne Software’s PhotoFrame 4 plug-in now works with Lightroom.

• This is more of a Photoshop thing but I thought it was cool. Keyboard shortcut stickers for your keyboard.

• Lastly, we have a facebook page. I wanted to keep my personal facebook page for close friends and family members to view. So we (the Photoshop Guys - Dave, Scott and I) created a Photoshop Guys facebook page. We’ll post behind the scenes photos, links etc… on it so make sure you stop by and “friend” it

• Finally, I posted some answers to some comment-questions for Tuesday preset post. In fact, I do this as often as I can so make sure you go back every few days and re-read the comments from any posts you like here.

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I’m back in Tampa from Photo Plus in New York last week and I wanted to say a big thanks to everyone who came up to say hi during the show. It’s always great to get out and meet the people I see comments from here on the blog. OK, now for some presets. This week I’ve got some graduated filter presets. There are literally a ton of ways I can go with these presets so I’ve decided to get fairly specific and create presets for blue skies. When you download them, you’ll see they’re listed in -1, -2, and -3 stop increments (just makes more sense to me then 0.3, 0.6, and 0.9). However, if you’re the traditional filter kinda person, then by all means feel free to change the names once you import them (just right-click on the preset name to rename it). You’ll also see that I’ve included placement for 3 locations. Top Third, Bottom third, and Middle. The top and bottom probably make sense since we typically try to position a horizon at the top third or bottom third. However, after looking through some of my photos, I’ve realized that when there’s another subject in the photo the horizon will often need to shift toward the middle which is why I included that one. Oh, and there’s also separate presets for vertical and horizontal photos because Lightroom has issues with presets created for just one or the other. Finally, there’s a few other settings thrown in there to help enhance the sky as well as any clouds in the sky. Whew! That sounds like a lot for some simple presets doesn’t it? The good news is all you have to do is click on them to use the preset.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy them. I’ve got a few more ideas which I’m sure you’ll see in the coming weeks. Thanks and make sure you leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Click here to see a sample of the presets.
Click here to download Matt’s Graduated Filter Presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

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I’m heading out to Photo Plus today so make sure you stop by the Peachpit booth at 1pm to say hi. Also, Adobe just announced the official release of Lightroom 2.1. You may remember that they announced a release candidate of 2.1 a while back. Release candidate is really just a fancy word for beta software and, naturally, most people weren’t very keen on downloading the beta. Here’s a link to Lightroom product manager Tom Hogarty’s announcement on his blog. When you open Lightroom 2 it should automatically ask you if you want to upgrade (at least mine did). So have at it and let me know your thoughts on the update.

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Here’s a few links that I thought were interesting. But first I wanted to say a huge thanks to all the folks that attended the Bar Harbor, Maine workshop I taught last week. What a great group of photographers we had. Seriously, I had a really nice time with everyone and, like always, I learned a few things from the group which is always cool. Now on to the links:

• I’ll be teaching at Adobe’s booth at the PDN Photo Plus Expo this week in New York. My class schedule is as follows. Make sure you stop by and say hi:
Thursday: 1:00 pm - Using Layers in Photoshop at the Peachpit Booth
Friday: 2:45 pm - Lightroom from Start to Finish at the Adobe Booth
Saturday: 1:15 pm - Lightroom from Start to Finish at the Adobe Booth

• One of the photographers in my Bar Harbor workshop last week, Howard Ignatius, had some pretty cool time-lapse photography videos on his portfolio site. Click on this link and then go to the 4th page of his portfolio under the movies section. Neat stuff.

• The folks over at Kelby Training are running an iPhone photo contest. Check it out.

• SlideShowPro v1.3.4 (the plug-in for Lightroom’s web module) for Lightroom has been released.

• Scott Kelby’s Lightroom tour is coming to Dallas, Texas next week on Oct. 27 and then to Orlando, FL on Oct. 29. There’s also dates coming in Los Angeles and Denver. You can find out more here.

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Greetings from chilly (but not really cold) Bar Harbor, Maine. Hey, I’m a Florida guy, what can I say - anything below 70º F is cold Anyway, this week I created a video about a feature in Lightroom 2 that has changed the way I store my photos in Lightroom. In fact, I’m teaching a workshop in Bar Harbor this week and some one came up to me on the first night and commented on how much better Lightroom 2 handles the distinction and management between folders and hard drives (and this was after I had already created this video). So if you’re storing photos on your computer’s hard drive and (or are thinking about) storing photos on external hard drives then make sure you check this video out.

Click here to watch the video. (16MB)

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